


Havoc to Be Wrought

by MelodyoftheVoid



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: :), Dib needs help, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Poor Life Choices, Zib needs to stop, oh we're doing this again, zib
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyoftheVoid/pseuds/MelodyoftheVoid
Summary: Understanding can come at a cost. Dib knows that now.
Relationships: Dib & Zim (Invader Zim), Up to you - Relationship, Zadr if you squint - Relationship
Comments: 55
Kudos: 209





	Havoc to Be Wrought

Dib erased the text for what felt like the 30th time, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. He’d never been good at apologies. He knew it, his family knew it, and anyone who caught him on their property on a late-night hunt definitely knows it. So, putting together a coherent and legitimate apology to himself was going to be a problem. Zib would see through any nonsense in a second. After all, who better to see through your excuses than you?

All that aside, he needed to fix this.

Closing the message app, he opened up his photo library. It’d been a few months since he’d gone back to the “Zim-void” to make amends. The last words of his alternate self kept repeating in his mind long after Dib returned home.

“You can’t leave me here alone.”

How many times had he felt the same? Abandoned by the world, by his family? Yeah Zib destroyed his timeline, but how much of that was a result of Zim’s personality? If the Florpus was anything to go by, Zim couldn’t understand any of the implications of his actions at the best of times. Who’s to say his alternate got caught up in Zim’s mania? With all that in mind, he decided wrangled Tak’s ship into taking him back and the rest was history.

The overwhelming silence of Dib’s room, once a welcome solace, now reminded him of how alone he felt without his new brother. Zib truly understood him in a way no one else did. He theorized with Dib during their Mysterious Mysteries marathons instead of ignoring him or calling him crazy. He finally had someone to watch his back on hunts! In such a short time they’d managed to get compelling (in their opinion) evidence of several ghosts and even a vampire! And god knows how much easier breaking into Zim’s base was when you had a human (?) translator at your side. Slides of their escapades in the forests and around town driving the knife of guilt further into his stomach.

The selfie he’d wrangled his two siblings into smiled up at him, only serving to tighten the knot in his stomach. He really didn’t mean to drive Zib away, but if there was one thing he was worse at than apologizing, it was keeping his foot out of his mouth.

The stars shone brilliantly that night, free from the usual haze that surrounded the city. The pair sat up on the roof with the telescope they’d developed, Dib asking a million questions and Zib offering fun facts about the many planets out there. Stories about alien species with twenty eyes but no mouths, the planet made entire of diamonds, a food court the size of Neptune, the worlds Dib longed to explore for himself one day. But something about his brother’s tone bothered Dib. He spoke in terms of “I” and “me” acting as though Zim’s experiences were his. The question left his mouth before he could really think about it.

“Zib, what’s having a PAK like?”

Yellow eyes blinked at him in surprise. Antennae twitched in thought before he gave his answer.

“It’s… Amazing.”

Zib stood up, that same manic energy Dib had seen in the void creeping into his words. The tips of his claws twitching with excitement.

“Imagine having the entire database of Irken knowledge at your fingertips, millennia of breakthroughs in engineering, medicine, and language! The galaxy laid out within your own mind! The capability to heal and defend me without the slightest effort on my part!”

Zib motioned to the telescope, “I mean look at that! We’re good at building sure, but with the addition of Irken tech we can see the whole universe through the atmosphere!”

Dib couldn’t help but see Zim in his new brother’s motions. Years of monologues had ingrained themselves in his mind, so much so that he could even hear the similar cadence, the emphasis of certain words. Once again, his mouth moved without input from his brain.

“Do you,” Dib hesitated. “Do you hear Zim?”

The energy faded as quickly as it came, replaced by stiffened shoulders.

“What?”

“It’s just, you talk like him sometimes. I remember back uh. There. You called me just another useless human. I sometimes wonder…”

“Wonder what,” Zib bit out. “What do you wonder Dib?”

“How much the PAK changed you. Is Zim, is he a part of you now? How much of you is-”

“Go away.”

“What?”

“I said LEAVE!”

A silver leg snapped out from the back of Zib’s head, coming ever so close to hitting Dib before he managed to get inside. His heart pounding out of his chest as he slumped to the floor. Mind racing.

And ever since Dib had scrambled back into his room, Zib remained on the roof. Refusing to move for anything or speak to anyone. 48 hours and several articles on how to properly apologize later, Dib wrote out what he hoped was enough.

_I’m so sorry for the other night. I shouldn’t have gone there. You are you. No one else. We still on for Mysterious Mysteries? It’s not the same without my fellow theorizer._

Dib knocked his head against the backboard before grabbing his blanket and heading downstairs. Even if Zib didn’t come, he may as well make some popcorn.

The familiar sound of the theme song helped him feel less like a complete tool. But he couldn’t help it if he was curious! Still though, he pretty much just questioned Zib’s legitimacy as a person. Who does that?

“Is there still room for one more?”

The popcorn flew out of his hands at the voice. He hadn’t even heard Zib come down the stairs, how’d he sneak up on him like that?! Clawed fingers caught the bowl in the air, before it could spill on the floor, saving the popcorn from the overly aggressive Roomba his father had programed to keep the house clean.

“Sorry for scaring you…”

Dib did his best to slow his heart rate down to a normal speed, “No. No you’re fine. I think we might need to put a bell on you so you can’t sneak up on us. If you did that to Gaz, she’d kill you.”

Jagged teeth crept up in smile before Zib’s expression fell.

“Did you mean what you sent?”

Dib scooted over to the other end of the couch, patting the seat next to him. He opened up the blanket to drape it over the both of them.

“Of course I did. You’re… You’re like my brother.”

Zib’s eyes widened, glee spreading across his face as his antennae raised. It almost reminded Dib of an excited puppy.

“Really?”

Dib opened his arms and nearly choked at the strength of the hug he received. Once the initial shock wore off, he wrapped his arms around his shaking alter. The two sat there, before Dib pulled back. Fidgeting as he tried to put words together.

“I guess, I think that I expected you to be more like me? But that’s dumb. We’ve had different experiences, Tak never even came to your Earth, and I never made a food blaster, as cool as that sounds. I’ll probably never understand what it’s like to have a PAK, and that’s ok. I can understand you though. That’s what matters, right?”

Dib didn’t need to be an expert on Irken behavior to see what the lowered antennae meant. He reached out a hand to his double’s shoulder, doing his best to be reassuring. He wished he knew how to deal with people when they were upset. He still remembered patting GIR with a broom once when his show got canceled and Zim put his plan on hold due to the tears flooding the base.

“Thank you.”

Dib tilted his head, “Thank you for what?”

“Making me feel like a person again.”

The host of Mysterious Mystery interrupted their little heart to heart with his usual bombast, announcing this episodes’ mystery: whether or not all tinfoil was sentient.

The moment thoroughly broken, the two giggled at the absurd concept of the episode.

“Man, I thought my version of Mysterious Mysteries went downhill, this is just awful!”

Dib snickered, “Oh you haven’t seen the one where they investigate a forest for an unknown cryptid when the recording is clearly a dog.”

The two settled into a comfortable rapport, with one or both calling out the absurdity of the ‘evidence’ the show presented. Eventually the credits rolled and the two surrendered the couch to Gaz, heading up to settle in for the night.

“Hey Dib?”

Dib stopped before entering his room, turning to see Zib wringing his claws, eyes firmly on the ground.

“What if I tried to stop Zim’s next plan?”

That wasn’t what Dib expected at all.

“Are you sure? I know that Zim is a bit of a sore topic for you…”

“Yes I’m sure! I’ve even come up with a code to disable the electronics in the base! I promise I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure…”

“You’ll see! I’m still a Dib, and I can defeat Zim just as well as you can! You'll understand just what I can do!”

The next day, Zib laid out the plan. He’d sneak up on the gnomes and put the usb with the overload code into it. For some reason those were on the security sentries. They’d just chalked it up to typical Zim weirdness. Then, he’d make his way into the base using the old stealth suit and dismantle the device that Zim was building. The alien had mentioned something about making more advanced robot bees.

Before Zib left, Dib gave him a quick pep talk and an offer, “If you need any help, just send me a message ok?”

His brother gave a lazy salute and headed off, Dib tried to ignore the worry in the pit of his stomach. His paranoia was probably acting up again.

Unfortunately for him, his paranoia was not wrong, before an hour could even go by, the opening bars of “Lifetime Achievement Award” came through his phone with the message: _Come quick dlkdfjk: zim is dsjkfl;sdS wroIFJfg HELP._

Without a second’s hesitation, Dib grabbed his coat and sprinted out the door. A brief “Zib’s in trouble going to Zim’s BYE.” flew out to Gaz before his feet hit the pavement. The distance wasn’t far, he knew that, yet somehow it stretched on and on.

The closer Dib got to Zim’s house the more worries swirled through his head like the falling autumn leaves. Zib could handily take Zim on, why did he need help? What went wrong? Did he really leave his alternate to suffer at the hands of the Zim who defeated him last time? In the haze of his anxiety he ran over the boundary of Zim’s yard without thinking. The world came back into sharp focus all at once. On instinct, Dib darted toward the nearest tree, hoping that his coat wouldn’t catch fire from the lasers. He only had a few unsinged coats left. Yet from his hiding spot, he couldn’t hear the tell-tale whine of the gnomes’ eyes.

Dib stuck his hand out, and again, nothing. Curiosity getting the better of him, he crept out into the open, fully ready to retreat again at a moment’s notice, but the gnomes stood still. Silent. Unchanged by his presence.

Now that Dib was looking at the house properly, not a single light illuminated the normally lively house. The code must have worked then! That momentary flash of hope turned just as quickly to utter dread. If Zib activated the code 40 minutes ago when he arrived, and he’d called for help just a few minutes ago, the backups should’ve kicked on by now. There was no reason for the blackout.

With no other option, Dib tried to kick open the door, only to have it swing forward on its own, sending him tumbling through the entryway. Glad that no one had seen his mistake, he stood up, brushing dust off before looking around the darkened house.

The house was utterly and oppressively silent. Only the quiet squeak of Dib’s boots accompanied him. Why wasn’t the Computer snarking at him? Where were Zim’s minions? He looked to the couch and spotted a familiar shape: GIR. Dib walked toward the little robot. Maybe he could get some answers from the little guy. He tended to be helpful in a roundabout way, like a toddler.

But GIR lie limp. No twitch to indicate sleep, no show on the TV to pacify him, the taco he’d been eating lay abandoned on the ground.

“GIR? Hey are you ok?” Dib’s voice echoed in the empty space. There wasn’t even the usual hum and buzz of machinery, only him. Taking a deep breath, Dib unzipped the little robot’s dog costume, hoping that this was just another one of the SIR’s games.

Black lenses only reflected his worst fears back at him.

Dib needed to find his brother _now_. The code was only capable of shorting out the house temporarily, GIR wasn’t supposed to be affected at all. Was he trapped in the labs with no power to escape? Would Zib have been shut down by the code too? His Pak was as vital to him as Zim’s. If it went out…

Dib ran to the elevator shaft in the garbage can, jumped in, and hoped that he was wrong.

Thankfully the tube to the lab wasn’t a straight shot down, although it could’ve caused less bruising to his poor tailbone all things considered. Picking himself off of the floor, he was caught somewhere between awe and complete and soul crushing fear.

The lab never ceased to impress him, sprawling indefinitely down and out with more tech than he could ever dream of getting his hands on. Now though, the normally fairly dim lab was bathed in a red light that softly blinked in and out, leaving Dib an infinitesimal spec in the labyrinthian space.

“Zib? Zib are you in here?”

A slight noise in distance was all the signal he needed. Dib took off toward it, painfully aware of the sound of his heavy footsteps against the metal floor. His labored breaths almost visible in the freezing basement.

A scraping came from somewhere ahead of him, the red forming the silhouette of a figure, no two figures. One on the ground, collapsed in a heap and the other standing tall a soft pink light emitting from somewhere. The emergency light blinked out.

“Zib!”

The taller one turned, familiar glasses tinted red in the returning light. He was holding something.

“Dib! Thank goodness you made it in time!”

Adrenaline slowed its hasty course through Dib’s veins for a moment. Oh. Zib was ok.

“In time for what? What happened here? Why is the power still off?”

His alternate didn’t answer, just smiled serenely. Dib’s gaze drifted to the figure on the floor, moving slightly, as if it were fighting to get upright. That was Zim, it had to be, so why was he struggling on the floor? Was this a trick?

“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” Zib walked towards him, his PAK the only constant source of light, “about you not understanding me.”

Whatever Zib was holding glowed too, but fainter. Something was wrong here. He could feel it. Dib took a small step back, trying to quell the fear rising in his throat.

“Zib?”

“And I kept thinking of ways to explain it, to try and put into words what this has done for me. Nothing was enough. The feeling of being whole, of being _more_. And then it hit me. What if I could make you understand?”

A final heave, and the fallen Zim pushed himself to his feet. A weak whisper, like a toy running out of batteries, “G-give i-it ba-a-ck.”

Ice ran up Dib’s spine, looking from the faint glow of the object in Zib’s hands, to Zim, who looked withered and decayed. His eyes sunken and skin sallow, somehow pale despite his green skin. But something was missing.

“Where is Zim’s PAK?”

“Right here of course!” Zib brandished the PAK in front of him, pride evident on his face. From what little Dib could see, the ends of the tubes were capped, and the lights shone a dark crimson. “I wanted to let you have this opportunity, like I did! You’ll finally get to win! You can understand! We can be the greatest team this universe has ever seen!”

He couldn’t help his motion backwards, away from the unhinged gaze of the person he’d considered his brother. Then he locked eyes with Zim. His berry pink eyes clouded with pain, duller than Dib could ever remember them being. Zim needed that PAK.

“This world is so different from mine, your dad tries, he actually tries. He attempts to understand and be proud of you. Your Gaz looks out for you in her own way. In this world if we presented Zim they wouldn’t,” Zib choked on his words. Tears gathering in his eyes before they hissed and sizzled down his cheeks, “they wouldn’t abandon you. Leave you to _rot_.”

The fusion snarled and wiped at his face, holding the PAK with the other hand.

“And even if they did, we could have each other. I- we, we would never be alone again. We could save this planet, together.”

“I don’t understand-“

“Exactly! Right now, you don’t get it. You can’t see the opportunity!” Zib’s body shook, whether from crying or his twisted excitement, Dib couldn’t tell. He continued his tirade, his scowl morphing into a too wide smile. “You can do so much more than he ever will. And besides, he won’t need it in a minute.”

Zim collapsed back onto the ground with a pitiful whimper, “Dib, p-please.”

“Zib, I can’t let you do this. This. This is insane!”

“What?”

Now Dib was shaking too, emotions running haywire, “You’re going to kill him! I can’t-“

“Can’t what? Kill him? What was the endgame Dib? Was this game going to go on forever? There’s an entire armada out there, what does Zim matter in the long term?” He snarled, casting a disdainful look to the Irken on the floor, “Or did you get attached to Zim? Did you forget your mission to protect the Earth at all costs?”

Dib shook his head violently, tears streaming down his face. “Not like this. Killing Zim can’t be the answer, please we can figure this out!”

“No,” Zib declared, “this is the only way. And like I said. Zim’s not going to need it in a minute. Well, a few seconds more precisely. Irkens can only live for ten minutes without their PAKs after all.”

Before he could stop to think about it, Dib charged at Zib, snatching the PAK and trying to remove the caps from the end. He had to save Zim. It didn’t matter why, he needed Zim to stay alive. He could sort out his complicated feelings on the matter later. He went to attach the device to the alien before he felt it. Or didn’t feel it.

Zim wasn’t moving.

Dib checked all the classic signs for life, breathing, a pulse, any recognition in Zim’s eyes. Nothing. Zim lay as silent as the rest of the house.

He hadn’t even realized he was screaming until he felt a hand on his shoulder, and the world snapped back into focus.

“You have two options Dib. You can either leave the PAK as it is and let Zim die forever, or you can keep part of him alive and put on the PAK. The choice is yours.”

Dib could hardly see Zib through the haze of tears. His world was crumbling around him, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He clutched the small metal backpack to his chest, holding tight to the only lifeline he had. It wasn’t until he felt the metal tendrils of the PAK move did he realize that might’ve been a mistake.

He was always curious of how the integration between Zib and his PAK went. He’d never gotten an explanation and now he knows why. The absolute agony could never be put into words. Every nerve sparked with pain while his head split in two. The sound of screaming only barely registered through the haze. The previously darkened lab went white, before a small prick eased the unending pain. Dib slumped limp to the ground, mind reeling. A tingling sensation remained at the back of his mind though. Distant yet familiar.

“I’m so sorry it had to be this way. I’d planned on using this sooner, to install the PAK in a more sterile environment, but no plan survives first contact.” 

The older fusion helped the newer to his feet, feet unsteady from a mixture of the painkillers and the lingering ache in his limbs. Disparate thoughts came and went, no clear direction or goal.

His eyes drifted to Zim’s ~~his~~ body on the floor. Anger and grief welled up in his throat, the tingling becoming a constant buzz, intensifying as he stared.

How could he do this, after he’d trusted him, gave him a new home? He’d opened up and now Zib had doomed him to be like him. A mantra of “I don’t want this” fell from his lips, an empty prayer that he would wake up from this nightmare soon. Dib couldn’t see anything but the unmoving Irken, tears blurring and twisting the familiar form. He couldn’t feel the arm Zib draped over his shoulder, nor hear the apologies coming from his brother.

Because Zib knew that by the PAK fully attaching, it was already integrating with Dib’s nervous system. In just a few moments without it, Dib would die. He knows. He tried it once. Before long, Dib’s physiology would shift, becoming more Irken. He’d never be the same. And no matter what Zib could try, could say, could do, Dib would never forgive him.

There was no fixing this.

**Author's Note:**

> I shouldn't be allowed in the discord, or anywhere near these characters. Chowy and Shandzii give me too much fuel for ideas. Enjoy another round of Dib suffering immensely! And no I'm not sorry. Dib getting PAKed was too fun of an idea. Hope you liked it!
> 
> Edit: I was gifted the amazing piece of art you see at the bottom by cdarkheartzero and the lovely faithfulwhispers and I couldn't be more thankful!!! Y'all are amazing, amazing people and artists! Link to the original [here!](https://melodyofthevoid.tumblr.com/post/622667251487784960/faithfulwhispers-art-cdarkheartzero-and-i-got)


End file.
